Archive for October, 2015

On the eve of this horror holiday, I thought I would offer a zombie treat.

This story was published in the now defunct Blood, Blade, & Thruster in their Winter 2006/2007 issue. Included in this issue was an interview published with Piers Anthony. This association caused my writing career to soar. JUST KIDDING. I should have saved that for April 1st. Anyway, I hope you enjoy the story, and if you have a moment during your busy life, LET ME KNOW, my ego would appreciate the response.

THE RELUCTANT ZOMBIE

As Norman stumbled through the dank Haitian swamp, he groaned, “Willard, it feels so unnatural walking around with my arms outstretched, but I can’t seem to put them down. “I have an image to uphold.”

Willard, who was shuffling along, shook his head and sighed, “Of course it’s unnatural, you’re a zombie, damn it. And your image is history.”

Norman complained, “I didn’t ask to be a zombie.” With some difficulty, he swiveled his neck and surveyed the Haitian countryside.

Norman took in the landscape surrounding him. He walked through a village. It was nothing more than a few huts of mud and straw along a dusty road. Chickens pecked in the brush along the roadside. Chickens! For some reason their presence made him uncomfortable. “I really don’t want to be a zombie,” Norman muttered. He was a forty-year-old college professor, a dark-haired trim man who always dressed well. Now he was walking around covered in grime and dressed in rags.

Willard said, “If you didn’t want to become a zombie, you shouldn’t have run over the old voodoo woman’s chickens with your jeep. Was she ever pissed? She’s also the one that converted me into a zombie, but that’s another story.”

Norman looked at Willard and could not guess what he once looked like. Willard was pale, gaunt and dressed in rags. His age made undeterminable by his zombie state.

“As soon as you angered her she began making one of her little dolls. She cackled while she worked. That is never a good sign. The doll is where your soul now resides.”

“I can’t believe this is happening to me, Willard. I came to Haiti to do research on Haitian religions. I am, or was, a respected and well-published anthropologist. Now look at me. I’m wearing rags and walking around like a…, like a …

“Zombie!” asked Willard

“Just because I ran over a few chickens?”

“Um, Norman, they looked like chickens, but they weren’t. Nothing around the voodoo woman’s house is what it appears. They were once her enemies. She changed them into chickens and you freed them from pecking for insects along the road for the rest of their lives. You ended their suffering. So naturally, in her anger, she turned you into a zombie. I am assigned to train all novice zombies. To instruct how to attack people teach them what are the best parts to eat.”

Norman made a face at this remark.

“Now what?” asked Willard?

Norman sighed, “I’m a vegetarian. But I will eat dairy.”

Willard said with disgust, “There are no vegetarian zombies. And attacking the dairy section of a store is not going to do much for the zombie image.”

Norman grumbled, “Oh, I wouldn’t want to do anything to detract from the zombie image. Give me a break.”

As the two zombies were arguing, Willard happened to glance over to the voodoo woman’s house. There she stood in the doorway. Willard could tell she was not happy.

She hobbled toward Willard and Norman, a waddling mass adorned with bones and beads. Her crown of thick dreadlocks made her appear as if some multi-legged beast was sitting on her head.

The old voodoo woman shouted at Norman, “I knew you be a trouble maker, with your fancy jeep and running over people’s property.”

Norman mumbled, “Sorry about the chickens.”

“You sorry all right. You be good and sorry real soon.”

The old woman produced her Norman doll, lifted the doll skyward, and began chanting in a low rumbling voice.

Norman’s soul returned to his body. He felt like his old self. He laughed with relief, then glance up. Willard stumbled toward him, arms raised.

“Willard old buddy, we’re friends – right?”

Willard only growled and roared.

Norman looked desperately for an escape. On either side of him, zombies with ash-gray complexions staggered in his direction. He was surrounded.

The old voodoo woman said, “Here be my ‘children’, and they be hungry.” She cackled as the circle of zombies grew smaller and smaller around Norman.

From beyond the wall of the living dead, Norman pleaded, “Please, make me a chicken!”

Okay, I may be slightly paranoid. Perhaps beyond slightly, but here is another example of how I think we are being manipulated, by having ‘experts’ telling us that the sky is falling.

Someone out there please help me understand this. It wasn’t long ago when the price of oil was about to exceed 50$/barrel and ‘experts’ predicted a catastrophe for that would be a first. Economic distress would surely follow. Now, years later, the price of oil has fallen below 50$/barrel and ‘experts’ are predicting economic distress sure to follow. Are we being manipulated, do ‘experts’ not know what the hell is going on or am I just getting too old to take everything I’m told as ‘the truth’.

Is there anyone out there that can offer guidance?

I know this blog is dedicated to writing, but our writing, in some way or another – even if it be horror, is based on the world around us.

In the past, I’ve posted pieces about my daughter, Lynn, who has chosen farming as a career. I’m proud of her for putting a work of love above the almighty dollar.

She’s been working at the Rodale farm, supporting St. Luke’s hospitals for a while now producing organically grown produce. In the beginning, she provided 12 crops for three hospitals. Now she is growing 30 crops for six facilities. I recently visited her farm, directly across from one of the hospitals, and was impressed by the operation and the knowledge she has gained. I walked among the fields, originally five acres but has grown by nine, not all used for farming. She told me of things I never considered when it came to organic farming. Like the fact that her fields required a buffer zone from nearby commercial fields to eliminate chemical applications, and how these zones depended on what the adjacent farm was growing. Buffer zones near farms using tractors to spread chemicals require less of a buffer than crops that spread agents with airplanes.

My girl really loves her work and I see a productive future for her. I hope you read at this article.

Just recently I learned that my baby is beyond repair, rust of the underside is the culprit. This was the second car I ever owned, purchased in 1975, a 1973 Super Beetle. The reason for the purchase was the theft of my first car, a 1970 Beetle while I was working in the Bronx. I drove my 1973 Beetle in New Jersey. Next was a trip to Florida. After driving to Florida I drove my love to California, and finally it was transported to Pennsylvania in 1985. Residing in Pennsylvania became its death knell. What has ceased to exist is not so much a car, but the representation of a fountain of memories.

Here is a brief history.

I learned to drive while in the air force during pilot training, stationed in Selma, Alabama, in a Beetle. I knew how to fly, but not how to drive. I recall driving the backroads and, when another Beetle passed, honking at each other. I purchased my first Beetle in 1970 while stationed at Sheppard AFB, in Wichita Falls, Texas. I loved it; my first car. When released from the service, (I washed-out of pilot training and became a missile crew commander) I drove my car home to Newark, New Jersey. As previously mentioned, while working in the Bronx my car was stolen. The sense of loss I experienced was extreme. My first car was gone.

Now the memories associated with my 1975 Super Beetle.

My mother who died in 1981 at the age of 59, rode in that car. The car transported me and my mother on shopping trips and excursions to buy Christmas trees. I drove the car from Newark to Miami to continue my career in nephrology research. When the location of my job changed, I drove my Super Beetle from Miami to Los Angeles, my brother as my companion.

My Beetle and I spent seven years in Los Angeles where one time my next door neighbor needed a ride and got to meet Peggy Lee, quite unexpectedly.

So many memories caught up in a vehicle. Now I have only memories for my Super Beetle is dead.

A daily practice of mine is to look at the weather forecasts. Included in the facts are the temperature highs and lows associated with that date. I sometimes dwell on the years these records were set, years when I did not exist. Could I be considered dead on those dates? Is the definition of death that interval before and after your existence?

What got me thinking of this topic was a quote I read a few days ago. A quote of Mark Twain’s when he was asked if he feared death. The great writer said, “I do not fear death. I have been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.”

This quote sums up exactly what I have been secretly pondering for years. But the part that bothers me is the ‘billions and billions of years’.

I have been both intrigued and mystified by the universe’s creation, the ‘Big Bang’. What follows are questions I have pondered, and the more I learn, the greater my confusion. What came before the ‘Big Bang’? Did time exist before that colossal event? For time is the interval between two events, and if there are no events, can there be time? Time would have to exist while the three other dimensions had not come into existence.

As a side-note, I have been working on a short story, The Event, for some time now and the story is tangled up in the notion of the ‘Big Bang’ and what came before.

As far as I know, the current theory speculates that the Higgs boson created the ‘Big Bang’, a particle which is able to create mass. But what created the Higgs boson, a particle which had to exist before the ‘Big Bang’. Just for a moment, let’s play with science. We all know the existence of the formula E=Mc2 Now, if the Higgs boson created matter, did light exist at that time? For, if light did not exist, E=M0 equals no energy or mass. So how can mass be created if light does not exist? Am I pursuing mind games are these answers known?

I’ve always thought of the ‘Big Bang’ as a combination of God and science, where physics and religion meet in a profound outcome. Was Mark Twain, and us all, dead before life for billions and billions of years, or for infinity?